Dong Po Pork 东坡肉

Mike loves pork belly.. any pork belly. So does my mother in law. I only like it if the fat layer melts in the mouth with no fatty smell.

There are many recipes online, some requiring pre deep frying and usually this is restaurant’s method to speed up the cooking. The supposedly actual way is to slowly cook it in wine and soy sauce… no extra oil involved. I searched and searched, and found this recipe . Does this look good? Sure it does. But I think she skimped on the spring onions. The recipe called for trimming the sides to make it really squarish or at least, have straight sides, but to me, that seemed wasteful. So, I didn’t do that, just let it stay the in original shape. Initially one should use a clay pot to do this, but I don’t have one. So, I just used a heavy based pot that won’t burn as easily as a single layer stainless steel pot. 5 ply pots will be even better.

The belly turned out so good. The flavour was good, very good. I didn’t add any salt or additional seasoning to it and it taste absolutely good. Even when it was slowly cooking, my mother in law exclaimed about the fragrance. Oh please try this, but please have patience for almost 3 hours of work :)

1kg (+/-200gm) pork belly, skin on (original recipe called for 1kg, but I only have 800gm, it worked well, and I think the seasoning will even be enough for 1.2kg)
100gm spring onions
50 gm ginger (weighed skin on)
500gm Shao Xing Wine (the one I used was fermented for 5 years, and is more expensive than the regular 2 year old wines)
100gm light soy sauce
20gm dark soy sauce
80gm brown candy sugar(1pc) or rock sugar

1. Bring a pot of water to boil and cook pork belly for 5 minutes. Drain.
2. Cut spring onions into long lengths to fit base of pot. Slice ginger and sprinkle over.
3. Put boiled pork belly onto spring onions, skin side down.
4. Put in both soy sauces and sugar. Lastly wine. Add some water if the liquid level is too low. Make sure the pork is at least almost covered with liquid.
5. Bring pot to a boil on high heat, reduce to low and simmer for 2 hours (flipping the pork halfway), or until it is tender enough to be easily poked thru with a chopstick.
6. Remove pork belly (no gravy) from pot and put into a steaming dish, skin side up.
7. Steam on high heat for 30 minutes.(This is a crucial step, do not skip this)
8. Pour gravy (in pot) over pork when it has finished steaming.

It tasted as good as it looked.

The skin was soft and melted in my mouth

No fatty smell at all.